London 2012 set to be sell-out

Thursday 28 July 2011 08:39 BST

The London 2012 Olympics looks set to be a sell-out, chief executive Paul Deighton has suggested.

He said: "You would have to say, based on the extraordinary demand that we saw in the first round and the second chance sales, that the remaining tranche of tickets that we will put on the market next year will see equally strong demand.

"The only tickets that we had left over were some soccer tickets. With soccer we have sold more tickets than any other kind of ticket and, of course, people do not even know yet which matches are being played or what the draw is.

"With that information we would hope we would have a really good chance of selling those too."

Another major round of ticket sales takes place early next year.

A large number of football tickets have been up for grabs because the men's and women's matches are played in big arenas.

These include Wembley Stadium, City of Coventry Stadium, the Millennium Stadium, Hampden Park, St James' Park and Old Trafford.

More than 3.5 million tickets have been sold so far across all sports.

London 2012 chairman Lord Coe noted: "There were 23 million ticket applications by two million people, that's an extraordinary volume, a world record-breaking demand for any sporting event on the planet."

There are 6.6 million tickets available to the public in total.

London 2012 have been in the firing line for criticism from frustrated sports fans who have missed out.

Many branded the ticket share-out, first by ballot where would-be buyers had to bid without knowing how many tickets they might get, as unfair.

Money was withdrawn from applicants' bank accounts before they knew which tickets they had been allocated. Demand outstripped supply in many events. In the men's 100m athletics final more than one million tickets were requested.

Unsold seats later became available on a first-come, first-served basis.

The aim of this second chance sales window is to get two-thirds of the 1.9 million original applicants to the Games.

Mr Deighton would not say whether they would get priority for the remaining seats but added: "Seb (Coe) and I promised those original 1.9 million that we would get as many of those (applicants) tickets to the Games as we possibly can."

Anyone who has been unlucky in getting seats to the Olympics should think about buying tickets for the Paralympics which go on sale on September 9, Mr Deighton suggested.

He finds the Paralympic competitions as compelling and many of the events will be at the same venues.

The second round of Olympic ticket sales, which ended earlier this month, kept London 2012 on track to hit £400 million of its £500 million revenue target from ticket sales.

London 2012 must raise £2 billion from the private sector to stage the Games.